He says, all in all, it’ll take six months to a year to achieve his goal.

Asked if he sees any professional conflict in being pro-union and being a labor reporter, Elk’s answer was an unequivocal no.

“A lot of reporters in Politico’s newsroom voted in the last election and didn’t see it as a conflict of interest,” he said in an email. “A union is just a representative body: some unions are opposed to keystone pipeline and some unions are in favor of a keystone pipeline. A union can be anything, and to those reporters who may say it’s a conflict of interest, I always say, well, what about the fact that you voted or that you cash a paycheck? Isn’t banking a conflict of interest?”

RedState‘s Erick Erickson sees a clear conflict of interest here. “In other words, the Politico is intellectually incapable of looking critically at unions,” he wrote on Twitter.

But Michael Dougherty, editor of TheSlurve, a baseball newsletter,and a senior correspondent at The Week, sees reason to admire him. “If I worked with Elk, I’d be skeptical about unionization,” he wrote on Twitter. “But I’d welcome him and his allies to try convincing me. I admire him for trying.”

Elk said he’s proud to be a union supporter from three generations of union organizing.

“Dr. Martin Luther King gave his life for the right to collective bargaining and I believe that collective bargaining, as the UN declares, is a basic fundamental human right,” he said.